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Sickness in the System

The SARS Epidemic

By

Ian Johnson

Updated May 2, 2003 12:01 a.m. ET

SARS has landed China's rulers with what is arguably the biggest challenge to their power in the country's 25-year reform era. But the crisis is not about the epidemic's medical demands or its economic fallout. Instead, it is political, the result of a long-brewing clash between an increasingly assertive population and an antiquated political system.

It's a problem that observers have known about for years. But most of the time discussion of it has been seen as churlish. Who can criticize 25 years of high economic growth,...